One of the most common questions associated with web marketing, is how you get someone from looking at your website, to walking into your store. J.C. Penny has answered this question with a marketing campaign so brilliant that, I couldn’t help but blog about it. For their major holiday promotion, J.C. Penny is handing out tiny holiday buttons, in store with codes printed on the back. Once you have the button you take it home and go to their website to enter the code, where you might win a prize. It’s a simple strategy, but one I think will be extremely successful for J.C. Penny. Here’s why:

1. It’s Interactive and Addictive: Honestly, going through the store collecting the buttons is like a little holiday scavenger hunt. No one likes going to the mall during the holidays so the hunt for buttons introduces a little dash of merry to your shopping trip. Not to mention, the gleeful anticipation of entering the codes to see if you are a winner. I have a whole pile of these buttons, and I can’t wait until I can enter some more to see if I won. The point here, is that J.C. Penny has come up with a campaign that is fun and requires people to come in and see what they have available to participate. If you want people to come into your store, give them a reason to visit!

2. It’s a Multi-media Campaign- There aren’t a lot of people who go to J.C. Penny on a regular basis, and probably fewer who follow their social media or regularly check their website. J.C. Penny has addressed this problem by creating a multi-media campaign with television commercials and print ads, as well as online and in-store advertising. The use of multiple media outlets, allows them to get the attention of customers who may not have originally seen the campaign. For smaller businesses on a tighter marketing budget, a multi-media marketing campaign is likely to be harder to pull off, but it is doable. Use print advertising, make friends with a blogger, and find out about spots on public access as opposed to regular television channels. The idea is that the more places you advertise the broader your audience and the more likely you are to get new customers.

3. Easy to Use Web Component- I have said it before, and I will say it again, there is no substitute for clean functional web elements to whatever you are doing online. For this contest J.C. Penny uses a simple web form, enter your email address and enter your button code. If you win, you have to fill out a little more info, but overall it is quick and painless to enter. If this was hard or you had to enter all of your information each time you played a button the whole thing would fall apart. An effective user friendly web design is the centerpiece to whatever web marketing you are doing, if you don’t know how to do it, find a company that specializes in web design.

4. It Provides them with Information for Future Campaigns- For every person who plays a button, J.C. Penny gets a new email address. With that email address they can send advertisements and specials, allowing them to attract more business throughout the year. On top of that, for each person that wins, they get their address to send print advertisements to. Using the information they gathered during this competition they can more accurately target their advertising efforts and get more bang for their advertising dollars. Any kind of marketing campaign that doesn’t get to your target demographic is a waste of money. By collecting information such as email and home address you can make sure your marketing materials are getting to shoppers who might actually consider purchasing your items.

This particular type of campaign may not be best suited to your business, but you can see how taking some of these lessons and applying them to your next marketing campaign could lead to more sales. You want a web marketing campaign that drives your sales. Most stores with websites don’t have an eCommerce component, so the website has to bring people into the store. Using marketing techniques which require them to come to the store will boost your traffic and sales. If you’re not sure where to start, get some help. There Nourtek Solutions can help you develop a web marketing campaign that will bring people into the store and improve your sales figures.